The Cold, Cold Ground

was bearded, long-haired and wearing pyjamas. He was smoking a cigarette and drinking what looked like a mug of tea.
    “I didn’t know they were allowed tea,” Matty muttered.
    “Don’t comment on it, we don’t want him to take the huff and storm off,” I hissed.
    We sat down opposite and I did the introductions. Seamus was a good-looking wee skitter with green cat’s eyes, arched eyebrows and a bit of a sleekit grin; he had a violet-coloured scar running from his chin to his lower lip but that didn’t detract from his easy-going, handsome face. He was thin, of course, but he didn’t look emaciated. He was in for possession of a stolen shotgun, which had only garnered him a two and a half year sentence. Why he had taken it upon himself to go on hunger strike was a bit of a mystery to me. You could understand why a lifer or a ten-year man would do it, but not someone who’d be paroled in twelve months. Maybe it was just to establish his credentials and he’d be one of the ones who pulled out of it in a fortnight “after listening to the pleas of his family”.
    “You’ve got five minutes, peeler,” he said. “I’ve got a phone interview with the Boston Herald at half nine.”
    “All right. First, let me say that I’m very sorry about yourwife, Seamus. I was the one who found her,” I said.
    “Ex-wife.”
    “Regardless. Ex-wife.”
    “Suicide, right?” he asked.
    “That’s what it looks like.”
    “Silly bint. And she’d got herself knocked up, hadn’t she?”
    “Where did you hear that?” I asked.
    He laughed and blew smoke. “You hear things, you don’t know where,” he said.
    His attitude needed serious work but that was not a job for me – I had to be relatively gentle with him. At any moment he could turn round and waltz back to his cell and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it.
    “When did you last hear from Lucy?”
    He shook his head. “Jesus. Last November? After the divorce came through. She said I owed her two thousand pound for her car which was total bollocks. We agreed to give that wee Mini to my ma. I didn’t owe her bloody anything.”
    He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray, lit another and looked at his watch.
    “I heard that she ran away to Cork,” he added.
    “How do you know that?” I asked.
    “Cos she sent postcards to her ma and her sister Claire. I mean, who fucking runs away to Cork? Stupid wee milly. If you’re knocked up ya go to fucking London and get it fucking seen to.”
    “I would have thought you’d be upset that she’d gotten pregnant while you were stuck in here?”
    “What the fuck do I care? We were divorced. She could marry fucking Prince Charles as far as I’m concerned.”
    “So you haven’t heard from her at all since Christmas?”
    “Nope,” he said with thin-lipped finality.
    “Did you ever threaten her at all, Seamus?”
    “Did I fuck. I haven’t wasted two seconds thinking about hersince last year.”
    “So you wouldn’t have objected if she’d taken up with someone else?”
    “Are you deaf, peeler? I’ve fucking told ya, I didn’t give a shite.”
    I rubbed my chin, looked at Matty, but he said nothing.
    “Borrow a smoke?” I asked.
    “Help yourself,” he said.
    I lit a Benson and Hedges and gave Matty one.
    “What makes a man want to starve himself to death?” I asked.
    “For Ireland!” Seamus said vociferously.
    “You know what my barber said?”
    “What did your bloody barber say?” he asked.
    “He said that nationalism was an outmoded concept. That it was a tool capitalists used to divide the workers and keep them down.”
    He shook his head. “In a free Ireland, rich and poor, Catholic and Protestant will be united!” he said.
    “Do you really believe that? Is that what’s happened in the Republic?”
    He stood up. “I’ve had enough of you, peeler. I have important people to talk to.”
    “Seamus, sit down. You told me you’d give me five minutes. Come on, mate. Is neamhbhuan cogadh na gcarad; má bhíonn sé crua, ní bhíonn sé fada ,” I said in the glens dialect of Irish that I had grown up with.
    He was taken aback by the Gaelic and blinked a couple of times before sitting down again.
    “Can you think of any reason why anyone would want her dead?” I asked.
    “Somebody topped her?” he asked with what looked like genuine surprise.
    “We’re awaiting the coroner’s verdict on that. It seems like a suicide but you never know. I was just wondering if